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--Went to the State Fair with my mom tonight. I always wonder if other states do it up like we do, but the MN State Fair is a big deal. Tonight we had Pronto Pups and cheese curds and funnel cake. We went to the big DNR pond and looked at fish. A man tried to sell us a hot tub. If money was different, he might have (there was a deal to replace our old dead one with a new one). We sat in the butterfly garden and my cleavage slowly filled with butterflies. We saw the DFL booth, and walked all over the place. It was lovely.

--Work starts again on Tuesday. I need the money so bad, and my schedule isn't that bad. Two hours Interpersonal Communications, one hours film, and then a Spanish/study hall/geometry series with the student I did some one on one with last year.

--Current SCHOOL classes are Transitions and something stupid. I'm learning a lot about how my high school failed me-- had they even bothered to try and measure whether their students were ready for the real world, they would have seen I was drowning.

--It's been two years since my father first decided he wanted a divorce from my mother. Only a couple of days before her birthday, actually. I never remember who knows what, so very simply:

My father is a narcissist, or some other kind of wrong thing. He also happens to be a misogynist, pretending to be some kind of liberal guy. I grew up in an emotionally and psychologically abusive household because of him. I wanted to be a writer, when I grew up, but he was of the idea that I would be published immediately or fail. Why, he wanted to know, couldn't I just go write something to get published. And why on earth did I want to go to an expensive private women's college?

Anyway, without my mom, who has also dealt with his abuse, I wouldn't be here. And in the year or two I lived at home with my parents, before he moved out, things got so bad I entered one of my deepest depressive cycles.

*I had, at 22, not learned to drive because he would always make me have panic attacks. When I said we'd lay down ground rules so we could get it done, he got so furious he refused to take me to work. I eventually learned to drive from cobbled together lessons from my little brother and lied so I could take the test.

*We played strange power games. One I remember well is being told to get ready to go get dinner. At this point, while I pay rent and may buy groceries, it is not the norm for me to buy dinner that way. We get in the car, and my dad asks why I didn't bring my purse (we are already too far to turn back). I receive a long angry lecture that triggers a panic attack. This is his tactic, to upset me so badly I'm weeping and unable to function. I sat in the car for 45 minutes because I couldn't face going inside.

Bottom line is that I became so deeply depressed that I do believe had my life not changed, I would have seen myself to a hospital.

--Which brings me to the fact that I haven't talked to my father in about two years. I don't want to see him or talk to him. I am an adult, and I get to decide what my relationships are like. I don't feel guilty, or really even regretful.

--I'm not sure where this is going. I should sleep though. How things wander...